Author: Max Frances
-
Any Change, Guv..?

So, the run-up to Brexit Day has begun and we are now locked in an informal dispute over a coin. Yes, forget all the hullabalo over post-Brexit trade deals, citizens’ rights, and economic downturns, the UK has got something more pressing to bottom out. Yes, we’re currently all getting bent out of shape over the…
-
One for the Road

More news from bonkers Britain, and this time guidelines regarding a possible two-alcoholic-drink limit on customers who are accompanied by children (i.e. anyone under the age of 16) have been uncovered at pub-cum-restaurant chain Wetherspoons. Sounds eminently reasonable to me but as you might expect, the backlash from toe rag customers has been vitriolic. It…
-
Burning Books…

Controversial? I don’t mind it at all. Go to amazon.co.uk and start burning…. Flypaper for Freaks and Freaking Hired! The more, the better… unsplash-logoMohamed Nohassi
-
EU Never Know…

In case anybody had forgotten, it’s about a week to go until Brexit. Or Bregg-zit, as Tony Blair would say. It wasn’t that long ago that we couldn’t go for ten minutes before the subject of the impending Euro-divorce gate-crashed the conversation like a Burberried community service delegate looking for ‘Steve’. Leave and Remain is…
-
A World of Pure Imagination

I think and talk about the declining service industry a lot. Probably too much, in fact. The public looks down their haughty noses at service providers; organisations themselves see it as a necessary evil but underfund it as a form of passive-aggressive lip-service. A way to block, frustrate and demoralise customers into giving up. In…
-
Good Moaning…

We’re not really complainers, here in the UK. Now I can understand that as we are very British. Polite and nobody wants to cause a scene. We have also never really got to grips with the concept of service. For me though, it is the abject hopelessness of complaints processes that pulls my proverbial chain.…
-
On a Bicycle Made for Two

So, in Russia, Mr Putin has pulled a surprise rabbit out of his Ushanka and hailed the end of the so-called Tandemocracy. That’s a weird term for the arrangement, but I am certainly not one for smears whether they relate to character, a cervix, or a doorknob. We had a similar high-profile arrangement in the…
-
Chug-a-Lug Along With Me…

Chugging – or charity mugging if you’d like me to get etymological (it’s a portmanteau of “charity” and “mugger’) – is back in the ascendancy. Skanky old meth addicts (well, that’s how they seem and behave) who steal eye contact and then (a few zany dance moves later) have moonwalked into your path with a cheeky…


